Saquon Barkley took his high school records but gave him a hard-to-top icebreaker

Nick Kurtz will often meet people while vacationing in the summer at Dewey Beach and tell them he’s from Pennsylvania. They’ll ask what part and he says the Lehigh Valley. What part of the Lehigh Valley, they say. Whitehall, Kurtz tells them.

“Then they’ll say, ‘Oh, isn’t that where Saquon Barkley is from?’” Kurtz said. “Then one of my buddies will jump in and say, ‘Yeah, Saquon broke all of Nick’s records.’”

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Long before Barkley chased Eric Dickerson, the future NFL rushing champion was gunning for Kurtz’s spot in the record books. Kurtz, now a 43-year-old insurance executive in Emmaus, Pa., was Whitehall High’s Barkley before Barkley. He graduated in 2000, leaving the school just outside of Allentown as the Zephyrs’ all-time leading rusher. And then arrived Barkley, a teenager built like the steelworkers who once filled the region.

Kurtz lost his records. But unlike Dickerson, he didn’t mind. They’re meant to be broken, he said. Plus, Barkley was a nice kid. And now he has a hard-to-top icebreaker.

“That’s normally a part of the conversation when I meet someone new,” Kurtz said.

Barkley’s 2,005 yards this season fell 100 shy of the NFL single-season record Dickerson set in 1984. The Hall of Famer created a stir earlier in the season when he said he wasn’t rooting for the Eagles star to catch him. Dickerson said last week that he would “never hate on another running back,” but he still wanted his record.

“Am I cheering for someone to break my record? No, I don’t think anybody does,” Dickerson said in a video on social media. “If you have a record and you want somebody to break it, that’s on you. I’m different, I’m old-school.”

If anyone could imagine how Dickerson felt, it was Kurtz. For 15 years, he was the man. The Whitehall coaches invited the all-time rusher each year to inspire the new crop of kids. He was able to talk about his Friday nights and give them advice before another season started.

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“Every Friday night you wanted to go out and prove something,” Kurtz said. “That’s what I would talk to Saquon about. I have a picture in my office of him and I and he’s a junior in high school. I said, ‘Listen, every game you play, what I thought of was I wanted everyone leaving the stands to say, ‘Who the hell was No. 9?’ For him, it was ‘Who was No. 21? He killed us tonight.’ Every Friday night you have something to prove. There’s always a doubter.”

It didn’t take long for Kurtz to know that his records — 1,662 yards in a single season and roughly 3,000 career yards — were in jeopardy. Barkley entered the starting lineup as a sophomore and then took off as a junior. By his senior year, it was only a matter of time. Barkley passed Kurtz in November and finished the season with 1,856 yards. Kurtz was knocked off.

“I’m sure it’s different in the pros,” Kurtz said. “Dickerson didn’t grow up in L.A. when he was with the Rams. Sa-Sa didn’t grow up in Philadelphia. But with these records at Whitehall and what he did for the community and what my teams did for the community, bringing it together, like I’m not in the basement pissed off that night. I wasn’t angry about it. I was glad someone was doing that well and I’m glad it was someone I knew. For me, I couldn’t have picked someone better to break my record.”

The stands were packed every Friday night when Kurtz played, as it seemed like all of Whitehall came to watch the Zephyrs. The Zephyrs played in the largest PIAA classification but had the smallest roster. Other teams had 22 starters while most of Whitehall’s players were used on offense and defense.

“When I’m playing corner and Saquon is playing cornerback, Parkland’s tailback is on the sideline getting water,” Kurtz said. “You’re playing both ways, but that really gets into the culture of the community. It’s blue-collar. This was a steel town with Bethlehem Steel. We’re surrounded by quarries, so there’s a lot of cement mills in the area. It’s a blue-collar town and a tough town. We weren’t the biggest, we weren’t the fastest, we weren’t the strongest. But that pride that our parents instilled in us propelled us to excel.”

Kurtz played Division II college football at Bloomsburg, sharing the field with future NFL All-Pro lineman and Frankford High grad Jahri Evans. He moved to wide receiver and led the Huskies in receiving yards as a junior. He graduated in 2004 and opened his own insurance business in Lehigh County. His football career is history, but it’s been coming up lately.

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“There was a lull after I got done with college,” Kurtz said. “Then it came back when Sa-Sa was blowing up. Then it went into another lull. And now a lot of my neighbors’ sons are playing high school football, so it’s been coming up a lot again.”

One of Kurtz’s Bloomsburg teammates was at Penn State for a football weekend while Barkley was still in college. There was Barkley, surrounded by security and handlers.

“My buddy is a bigger guy and he just took a beeline to him,” Kurtz said. “He said, ‘Whitehall.’ Barkley looked up. Started talking. Then he said I played college football with Nick Kurtz. Saquon looked up again and they started talking more. Then he told Saquon, ‘You’re the guy who broke all Nick’s records.’”

Kurtz’s old record was even a way to break the ice with Barkley. Barkley looked up and corrected Kurtz’s buddy.

“I broke all of them,” Barkley said. “Except for one.”

Kurtz rushed for 429 yards in October 1999 against Bethlehem Freedom. That record still stands. He did something Saquon Barkley never did. How’s that for an icebreaker?

“Records are always meant to be broken,” Kurtz said. “When it comes to team sports, especially football, when players are breaking records, they’re normally on successful teams. So I was glad that Whitehall as a team was successful. And what I knew of Saquon at that point in my life, he’s exactly as he is now. He’s quiet, humble, and contrite. He’s all-around just a good dude. So if you can pick anyone to break your records, you want someone like that. You don’t want to pick a jerk.

“They’re made to be broken. It’s whipped cream on top when A, it’s a successful team, and B, it’s a good person doing it. I’ll call him a kid, but he’s a grown man now. But at that point in time, he was a kid. You could tell he had it in him and he knew he had it in him. But he was humble about it. I think that says a lot.”

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